Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises | |
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Westchester County , New York, U.S | |
Spouse | Margit von Mises |
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Field | Austrian School |
Alma mater | University of Vienna |
Doctoral advisor | Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk |
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Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Mises emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1940.[3] Since the mid-20th century, libertarian movements have been strongly influenced by Mises's writings. Mises' student Friedrich Hayek viewed Mises as one of the major figures in the revival of classical liberalism in the post-war era. Hayek's work "The Transmission of the Ideals of Freedom" (1951) pays high tribute to the influence of Mises in the 20th-century libertarian movement.[4]
Mises's Private Seminar was a leading group of economists.[5] Many of its alumni, including Friedrich Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, emigrated from Austria to the United States and Great Britain. Mises has been described as having approximately seventy close students in Austria.[6]
Biography
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Early life
Ludwig von Mises was born to Jewish parents in the city of Lviv, present-day Ukraine (the then-Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary). The family of his father, Arthur Edler von Mises, had been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century (Edler indicates a noble landless family), and they had been involved in financing and constructing railroads. His mother Adele (née Landau) was a niece of Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the Austrian Parliament.[7]: 3–9 Arthur von Mises was stationed in Lemberg as a construction engineer with the Czernowitz railway company.
By the age of 12, Mises spoke fluent German, Russian, Polish and French, read Latin and could understand Ukrainian.[8] Mises had a younger brother, Richard von Mises, who became a mathematician and a member of the Vienna Circle, and a probability theorist.[9] When Ludwig and Richard were still children, their family moved back to Vienna.[citation needed]
In 1900, Mises attended the University of Vienna,[10] becoming influenced by the works of Carl Menger. Mises's father died in 1903. Three years later, Mises was awarded his doctorate from the school of law in 1906.[11] From 1913 to 1938, Mises was a professor at the university, during which he mentored Friedrich Hayek.[2]
Life in Europe
In the years from 1904 to 1914, Mises attended lectures given by Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.[12] He graduated in February 1906 (Juris Doctor) and started a career as a civil servant in Austria's financial administration.
After a few months, he left to take a trainee position in a Vienna law firm. During that time, Mises began lecturing on economics and in early 1909 joined the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, serving as economic advisor to the Austrian government until he left Austria in 1934.[13] During World War I, Mises served as a front officer in the Austro-Hungarian artillery and as an economic advisor to the War Department.[14]
Mises was chief economist for the
While in Switzerland, Mises married Margit Herzfeld Serény, a former actress and widow of Ferdinand Serény. She was the mother of Gitta Sereny.
Work in the United States
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Bettina Greaves on Ludwig von Mises's Life (1994) |
In 1940, Mises and his wife left Austria, by then a territory of the Nazi Germany, and emigrated to New York City in the United States.[2][7]: xi He had come to the United States under a grant by the Rockefeller Foundation. Like many other classical liberal scholars who fled to the United States, he received support from the William Volker Fund to obtain a position in American universities.[18] Mises became a visiting professor at New York University and held this position from 1945 until his retirement in 1969, though he was not salaried by the university.[11] Businessman and libertarian commentator Lawrence Fertig, a member of the New York University Board of Trustees, funded Mises and his work.[19][20]
For part of this period, Mises studied
In 1962, Mises received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art for political economy[22] at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C.[7]: 1034
Mises retired from teaching at the age of 87[23] and died at the age of 92 in New York. He is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Grove City College houses the 20,000-page archive of Mises papers and unpublished works.[24] The personal library of Mises was given to Hillsdale College as bequeathed in his will.[25][26]
At one time, Mises praised the work of writer Ayn Rand, and she generally looked on his work with favor, but the two had a volatile relationship, with strong disagreements for example over the moral basis of capitalism.[27]
Contributions and influence in economics
Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism.[28] In his magnum opus Human Action, Mises adopted praxeology as a general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and set forth his methodological approach to economics.
Mises was for economic non-interventionism[29] and was an anti-imperialist.[30] He referred to the Great War as such a watershed event in human history and wrote that "war has become more fearful and destructive than ever before because it is now waged with all the means of the highly developed technique that the free economy has created. Bourgeois civilization has built railroads and electric power plants, has invented explosives and airplanes, in order to create wealth. Imperialism has placed the tools of peace in the service of destruction. With modern means it would be easy to wipe out humanity at one blow."[31]
In 1920, Mises introduced in an article his
In his 1956 book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Mises examined American socialism and addressed intellectual opposition to the free market. Mises argued that these intellectuals were too resentful towards the necessity of handling mass demand, which he argued is necessary for large businesses to prosper.[2]
Friends and students of Mises in Europe included
At his New York University seminar and at informal meetings at his apartment, Mises attracted college and high school students who had heard of his European reputation. They listened while he gave carefully prepared lectures from notes.[34][35] Among those who attended his informal seminar over the course of two decades in New York were: Israel Kirzner, Hans Sennholz, Ralph Raico, Leonard Liggio, George Reisman, and Murray Rothbard.[36] Mises's work also influenced other Americans, including Benjamin Anderson, Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Max Eastman, legal scholar Sylvester J. Petro and novelist Ayn Rand.
Creation of the Mises Institute
As a result of the economic works of Ludwig Von Mises, the Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, Burton Blumert, and Murray Rothbard, following a split between the Cato Institute and Rothbard, who had been one of the founders of the Cato Institute.[non-primary source needed] It was funded by Ron Paul.
The Mises Institute offers thousands of free books written by Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and other prominent economists in e-book and audiobook format.[37] The Mises Institute also offers a graduate school program.[citation needed]
Reception
Debates about Mises's arguments
Economic historian
Scholar Scott Scheall called economist
In a 1978 interview, Hayek said about Mises's book Socialism:
At first we all felt he was frightfully exaggerating and even offensive in tone. You see, he hurt all our deepest feelings, but gradually he won us around, although for a long time I had to – I just learned he was usually right in his conclusions, but I was not completely satisfied with his argument.[42]
Economist
Economist Murray Rothbard, who studied under Mises, agreed he was uncompromising, but disputes reports of his abrasiveness. In his words, Mises was "unbelievably sweet, constantly finding research projects for students to do, unfailingly courteous, and never bitter" about the discrimination he received at the hands of the economic establishment of his time.[44]
After Mises died, his widow Margit quoted a passage that he had written about Benjamin Anderson. She said it best described Mises's own personality:
His most eminent qualities were his inflexible honesty, his unhesitating sincerity. He never yielded. He always freely enunciated what he considered to be true. If he had been prepared to suppress or only to soften his criticisms of popular, but irresponsible, policies, the most influential positions and offices would have been offered him. But he never compromised.[45]
Comments about fascism
Marxists Herbert Marcuse and Perry Anderson as well as German writer Claus-Dieter Krohn accused Mises of writing approvingly of Italian fascism, especially for its suppression of leftist elements, in his 1927 book Liberalism.[46] In 2009, economist J. Bradford DeLong and sociologist Richard Seymour repeated the accusation.[47]
Mises, in his 1927 book Liberalism, wrote:[48]
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.
Mises biographer Jörg Guido Hülsmann says that critics who suggest that Mises supported fascism are "absurd" as he notes that the full quote describes fascism as dangerous. He notes that Mises said it was a "fatal error" to think that it was more than an "emergency makeshift" against up and coming communism and socialism as exemplified by the Bolsheviks in Russia and the surging communists of Germany.[7]: 560 Hülsmann writes in Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism that Mises had been a card-carrying member of the Fatherland Front party and that this was "probably mandatory for all employees of public and semi-public organizations."[49]
Mises, in his 1927 book Liberalism, also wrote of fascism:[48]
Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property. The next episode will be the victory of Communism. The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales. So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.
In regards to Nazism, Mises called on the Allies in his 1944 book Omnipotent Government to "smash Nazism" and to "fight desperately until the Nazi power is completely broken".[50]
Works
Books
- The Theory of Money and Credit (1912, enlarged US edition 1953)
- Nation, State, and Economy (1919)
- Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (1920) (long-form essay)
- Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922, 1932, 1951)
- Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition(1927, 1962)
- A Critique of Interventionism (1929) (collection of essays)
- Epistemological Problems of Economics (1933, 1960)
- Memoirs (1940)
- Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1941, 1998)
- Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War (1944)
- Bureaucracy (1944, 1962)
- Planned Chaos (1947, added to 1951 edition of Socialism)
- Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949, 1963, 1966, 1996)
- [Planning for Freedom] (1952, enlarged editions in 1962, 1974, and 1980) (Collection of essays and addresses)
- The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956)
- Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (1957)
- The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962)
- The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics (1969) (long-form essay)
- Notes and Recollections (1978, written in 1940-41)
- On the Manipulation of Money and Credit (1978) (collection of essays, reissued as The Causes of the Economic Crisis)
- Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979, collection of lectures given in 1959)
- Money, Method, and the Market Process (1990) (collection of essays)
- Economic Freedom and Interventionism (1990) (collection of essays and addresses)
- The Free Market and Its Enemies (2004, collection of lectures given in 1951)
- Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction (2006, collection of lectures given in 1952)
- Ludwig von Mises on Money and Inflation (2010, collection of lectures given in the 1960s)
Book reviews
See also
- Contributions to liberal theory
- Liberalism in Austria
- List of Austrian School economists
- Mises Institute – Alabama-based think tank
- Thymology
References
- ^ Regarding personal names: Edler was a title before 1919, but now is regarded as part of the surname. It is translated as a noble (one). Before the August 1919 abolition of nobility as a legal class, titles preceded the full name when given (Graf Helmuth James von Moltke). Since 1919, these titles, along with any nobiliary prefix (von, zu, etc.), can be used, but are regarded as a dependent part of the surname, and thus come after any given names (Helmuth James Graf von Moltke). Titles and all dependent parts of surnames are ignored in alphabetical sorting. The feminine form is Edle.
- ^ a b c d "Ludwig von Mises". Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 June 2023. Retrieved 2023-06-29.
- ^ "Profiles: Ludwig von Mises". Mises Institutes. 28 July 2014.
- ^ Hayek, Friedrich A. (2012). "The Transmission of the Ideals of Economic Freedom". Econ Journal Watch. 9 (2): 163–169.
- ISBN 978-0865978539.
- ^ Beller, Steven (1989). Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ ISBN 978-1933550183.
- Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "The Cultural Background of Ludwig von Mises", The Ludwig von Mises Institute, p. 1
- ^ "Richard von Mises". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
- ISBN 978-0836251067.
- ^ a b "Biography of Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) ('Chronology')". Mises.org. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
- Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1984, p. 10, Rothbard, Murray, The Essential Ludwig von Mises, 2nd printing, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1983, p. 30.
- ^ Rothbard, Murray, The Essential Ludwig von Mises, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988, p. 25.
- ^ Mises in Wartime, Mises Institute
- ^ "The Free Market: Meaning of the Mises Papers, The". Mises.org. Retrieved 2009-11-26.
- ^ OCLC 11668538
- ISBN 978-0-674-03318-4.
- S2CID 153525815.
- ^ Moss, Laurence S. "Introduction". The Economics of Ludwig von Mises: Toward a Critical Reappraisal. Sheed and Ward, 1976.
- LewRockwell.com. 21 January 2002 [1]
- ^ Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nikolaus, Graf von (1953). An idea conquers the world. London: Hutchinson. p. 247.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Kurien Society of Science and Art website Archived 2020-10-30 at the Wayback Machine, Listing of recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art; Google Translated page, accessed June 5, 2013.
- ^ Rothbard, Murray, Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988, p. 61.
- ^ Austrian Student Scholars Conference Announcement, Grove City College website, 2013, accessed June 8, 2013.
- ^ "About – Collections – Mossey Library". lib.hillsdale.edu. Retrieved 2016-07-26.
- ^ http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook514pdf.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ISBN 978-0199740895.
- ^ For example, Murray Rothbard, a leading Austrian school economist, has written that, by the 1920s, "Mises was clearly the outstanding bearer of the great Austrian tradition." Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988, p. 25.
- ^ "Why Intervention Persists". 2005-03-16.
- ^ "The Anti-Imperialism of Mises". 2013-06-24.
- ^ "Ludwig von Mises on World War I | Ludwig von Mises". 2017-04-06.
- ^ Ludwig von Mises Institute. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2014-12-16. Retrieved 2008-09-08.
- ^ Rothbard, Murray, Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988, p. 67.
- ISBN 978-0521637657. pp. 66–67.
- ^ Reisman, George, Capitalism: a Treatise on Economics, "Introduction", Jameson Books, 1996; and Mises, Margit von, My Years with Ludwig von Mises, 2nd enlarged edit., Center for Future Education, 1984, pp. 136–137.
- ^ On Mises's influence, see Rothbard, Murray, The Essential Ludwig von Mises, 2nd printing, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1983; on Eastman's conversion "from Marx to Mises", see Diggins, John P., Up From Communism Harper & Row, 1975, pp. 201–233; on Mises's students and seminar attendees, see Mises, Margit von, My Years with Ludwig von Mises, Arlington House, 1976, 2nd enlarged edit., Center for Future Education, 1984.
- ^ "Books & Library". Mises Institute. Archived from the original on Jan 24, 2022. Retrieved 2022-01-24.
- ISBN 978-0226091914.
- ^ "Liberalism in Caricature", The Economist
- ISBN 978-0375751455.
- ^ S2CID 151703666.
- UCLA Oral History (Interview with Friedrich Hayek), American Libraries/Internet Archive, 1978. Retrieved on 4 April 2009 (Blog.Mises.org Archived 2009-06-27 at the Wayback Machine), source with quotes
- ^ "Best of Both Worlds (Interview with Milton Friedman)". Reason. June 1995.
- YouTube, 1990 talk at Mises University at Stanford, at MisesMedia Youtube channel.
- OCLC 47734733.
- ^ Ralph Raico, "Mises on Fascism, Democracy, and Other Questions, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1996) 12:1 pp. 1–27
- ISBN 1846944562
- ^ a b Ludwig von Mises, "Liberalism", Chapter 10, The Argument of Fascism, 1927.
- ^ Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (2007) p. 677
- ISBN 978-0865977549.
Further reading
- Butler, Eamonn, Ludwig von Mises – A Primer, Institute of Economic Affairs (2010).
- ISBN 978-0415779517.
- Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part I", (The Freeman, May 2006).
- Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part II", (The Freeman, June 2006).
- Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time, Part I", (The Freeman, March 2005).
- Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time, Part II", (The Freeman, April 2005).
- Ebeling, Richard M. "Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom", (The Freeman, June 2004).
- Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Jones, Daniel Stedman. Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (2012), pp. 49–51.
- The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1987, v. 3, pp. 479–480.
- Shelton, Judy (1994). Money Meltdown: Restoring Order to the Global Currency System. New York: Free Press. p. 399. OCLC 797359731.
- Reviewed in: Dornbusch, Rudi (July 10, 1994). "Money Meltdown". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2013.
The hero in this book is Ludwig von Mises.
.
- Reviewed in: Dornbusch, Rudi (July 10, 1994). "Money Meltdown". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved May 25, 2013.
- von Mises, Margit (1976). My Years with Ludwig von Mises. Arlington House Publishers. ISBN 978-0870003684.
- OCLC 750831024.
External links
- Bergner, Matthias. "Mises, Ludwig" (in German). Deutsche Biographie. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
- Ludwig von Mises Institute Europe
- ISBN 9780745002309 – via Internet Archive.
- Mises.de (books and articles in the original German versions by Mises and other authors of the Austrian School)
- Ludwig von Mises at Curlie
- Ludwig von Mises at Find a Grave
- Ludwig von Mises publications indexed by Google Scholar
- Ludwig von Mises Institute